The essays Mother Tongue by Amy Tan and Sacha Z. Scoblic’s Rock Star, Meet TeeTotaler are both stories of personal experience. The essays are written in an informal style, yet sophisticated phrasing, as well as confident writing in order to bring out sympathy and understanding from the readers. Both essays are narrated through both author’s own thoughts and feelings throughout their stories, as both become open and personal. The following paragraphs will compare and contrast how both essays have similar themes about overcoming obstacles in life, yet Sacha’s essay is more about the need to fit into society without changing oneself, while Amy’s is disproving assumptions society places on language and what true purpose of language.
To begin, Amy Tan was born in California to Chinese immigrant parents (Literature for Life 117). The story focuses on how Amy’s mother was always looked down on because she did not speak proper english. Amy had to grow up using different Englishes: what she learned in school, and the English she had to use at home which was a product of her culture. Amy strives to disprove how society thinks, just because someone has “broken” English means they have low intelligence or understanding. Even though society feels that her mother's language is “broken” her mother understands things Amy and numerous others could never begin to. Amy states how her mother reads Forbes reports, listens to Wall Street Week, and converses with her stockbroker, and yet friends and others can not understand what her mother says. So this proves that language in society is more than just communication, language is a social tool of measuring an individual's worth. Even when Amy’s teachers in school tried to steer her in oth...
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In the end, both essays revealed struggles the authors had to go through in their life and overcame the obstacles along the way. Amy’s essay showed there was more to a person than their language even if society deemed their language “broken”, while Sacha’s essay proved society should not have a say in finding one’s identity or to define themselves. Both essays help the reader relate to numerous struggles in society and how to overcome those hurdles even if the journey might be long, and in the end the journey will be worth all the effort.
Works Cited
Scoblic, Sacha Z. “Rock Star, Meet Teetotaler.” Literature for Life. Ed. X. J. Kennedy,
Dana Gioia, and Nina Revoyr. New York: Pearson. 2013. 840. Print.
Tan, Amy . “Mother Tongue.” Literature for Life. Ed. X. J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia, and
Nina Revoyr. New York: Pearson. 2013. 117. Print.
Language can defined the type of person you become and it has an influence on our choices as well as lifestyle. Language itself has become a way of seeing life in a different perspectives. Tan discusses the many ways in which language has played a role in her life and the result from it. I can relate to Tan’s experience to some extent because I come from a bilingual household too. Just like Tan, I am one of my mother’s main source of communication with people who don’t speak spanish. I believe the notion of Tan’s “Mother Tongue” is stating that just because someone who cannot speak the English language perfectly, is considered less intelligent to many compared to those who can understand and speaks it fluently. But what makes us all unique is that it is rare to find two or more people who speak the same exact English. Even though both Tan and I helped our parent and come from different ethnic backgrounds; Tan came from a Chinese family while I came from a Hispanic family. We both share similar ideas about the language spoken in our household, and it was also a big challenge for both of us while we were being raised by an immigrant parent who spoke only “limited English”(Tan
Have you ever been to another country, state, or even city and realized how different your accent may be? Have you been asked to repeat a word or phrase that you may say differently? Sometimes we were asked for a good laugh, but that’s not always the case. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldúa and “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, both authors use personal narrative to demonstrate how their lives and identity are affected by their language and culture.
The Essay written by Amy Tan titled 'Mother Tongue' concludes with her saying, 'I knew I had succeeded where I counted when my mother finished my book and gave her understandable verdict' (39). The essay focuses on the prejudices of Amy and her mother. All her life, Amy's mother has been looked down upon due to the fact that she did not speak proper English. Amy defends her mother's 'Broken' English by the fact that she is Chinese and that the 'Simple' English spoken in her family 'Has become a language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk' (36). Little did she know that she was actually speaking more than one type of English. Amy Tan was successful in providing resourceful information in every aspect. This gave the reader a full understanding of the disadvantages Amy and her mother had with reading and writing. The Essay 'Mother Tongue' truly represents Amy Tan's love and passion for her mother as well as her writing. Finally getting the respect of her critics and lucratively connecting with the reaction her mother had to her book, 'So easy to read' (39). Was writing a book the best way to bond with your own mother? Is it a struggle to always have the urge to fit in? Was it healthy for her to take care of family situations all her life because her mother is unable to speak clear English?
“Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective” an essay written by Leslie Marmon Silko brings to life the diversified facets of the Pueblo Indian culture, sharing with readers the infrastructure of Puebloan dialect and folklore. Likewise, Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” details a series of prominent reflections of the nurturing voice responsible for constructing the author’s perceptions of the world. Both of these essays share a corresponding theme of the influence one’s culture can have on can have on individual styles of communication. The implication of the nonfiction elements plot and setting throughout the piece allows the author to adequately reinforce the theme of each piece. Each essay embodies commonalities, as well as, differences in the nonfiction elements used to depict the common theme.
“Se Habla Español,” is written by a Latin author, Tanya Barrientos; and Amy Tan, a Chinese author, wrote “Mother Tongue”. In both literate narratives the authors write about their experiences with language and how it impacted their lives. In This essay we will be discussing the similarities as well as the differences in the stories and the authors of “Se Habla Español” and “Mother Tongue”. We will discuss how both authors use a play on words in their titles, how language has impacted their lives, how struggling with language has made them feel emotionally, and how both authors dealt with these issues.
English is an invisible gate. Immigrants are the outsiders. And native speakers are the gatekeepers. Whether the gate is wide open to welcome the broken English speakers depends on their perceptions. Sadly, most of the times, the gate is shut tight, like the case of Tan’s mother as she discusses in her essay, "the mother tongue." People treat her mother with attitudes because of her improper English before they get to know her. Tan sympathizes for her mother as well as other immigrants. Tan, once embarrassed by her mother, now begins her writing journal through a brand-new kaleidoscope. She sees the beauty behind the "broken" English, even though it is different. Tan combines repetition, cause and effect, and exemplification to emphasize her belief that there are more than one proper way (proper English) to communicate with each other. Tan hopes her audience to understand that the power of language- “the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth”- purposes to connect societies, cultures, and individuals, rather than to rank our intelligence.
Focusing on times in her life where she was looked at for her colour and background rather than for her talents or attributes. In Mother Tongue Tan focuses on her mother’s English and how it defines who she perceives her mother to be and the times it has limited her mother. The stories are both about women facing prejudice however, one is from the perspective of the person experiencing it and the other from the perspective of someone helping their mother face prejudice. What comes out of Mukherjee’s novel seems rawer and personal whereas Tan seems further removed and more implicated in her own issues rather than the issues related to
In the story “Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan, Mrs. Tan talks about (in the book) her life and how she grew up with different Englishes was very hard and how it has affected her today. The setting of the book goes from being at lecture to the past of Amy Tan and her mother along with the different Englishes she had to come accustomed to. In “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, the author’s attitude towards the “different Englishes” she grew up with is fascinated. Amy Tan conveys this attitude through wanting to learn all different kinds of Englishes, her use of Englishes in her novel, and the acceptance she developed of her mother’s broken English.
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” Encounters: Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. 2nd ed. Ed. Pat C. Hoy II and Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. 603-07.
Despite growing up amidst a language deemed as “broken” and “fractured”, Amy Tan’s love for language allowed her to embrace the variations of English that surrounded her. In her short essay “Mother Tongue”, Tan discusses the internal conflict she had with the English learned from her mother to that of the English in her education. Sharing her experiences as an adolescent posing to be her mother for respect, Tan develops a frustration at the difficulty of not being taken seriously due to one’s inability to speak the way society expects. Disallowing others to prove their misconceptions of her, Tan exerted herself in excelling at English throughout school. She felt a need to rebel against the proverbial view that writing is not a strong suit of someone who grew up learning English in an immigrant family. Attempting to prove her mastery of the English language, Tan discovered her writing did not show who she truly was. She was an Asian-American, not just Asian, not just American, but that she belonged in both demographics. Disregarding the idea that her mother’s English could be something of a social deficit, a learning limitation, Tan expanded and cultivated her writing style to incorporate both the language she learned in school, as well as the variation of it spoken by her mother. Tan learned that in order to satisfy herself, she needed to acknowledge both of her “Englishes” (Tan 128).
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue." 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. 4th Edition. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 417-23. Print.
Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue." Across Cultures. Eds. Sheena Gillespie and Robert Singleton. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. 26-31.
The purpose of Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue,” is to show how challenging it can be if an individual is raised by a parent who speaks “limited English” (36) as Tan’s mother does, partially because it can result in people being judged poorly by others. As Tan’s primary care giver, her mother was a significant part of her childhood, and she has a strong influence over Tan’s writing style. Being raised by her mother taught her that one’s perception of the world is heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used.
Amy Tan, the author of The Joy Luck Club, talks about in the article, Mother Tongue, how her mother’s broken English would affect her daily life, how people treat her because of it, and how she felt about her mother’s language. She also talks about when she was in school she was pushed towards science and maths because of her cultural background, as an Asian American student; when she really wanted to write English and become an English major. In the beginning paragraph of the article Tan explains how she has to depict the different Englishes she uses through her daily life in writing and how she is able to deal with it.
If you are not fluent in a language, you probably don 't give much thought to your ability to make your personality attractive, to be in touch with the people and be understood in your world, that doesn’t mean you are an underestimated person. Every person has something special to make them more unique, remarkable, and gorgeous between people. The opinions could lead towards success, or those opinions could be one that is losing, and have a negative impact on how people connect with you. In Amy Tan 's “Mother Tongue” she made this book for several reasons. She had started her life by learning language, and she always loved to spend her time to learn language, but this story focuses about Amy Tan 's mother with her terrible English,